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Approach to Contemporary Lithuanian Textile Art: NOT FOR USE
Today creative textile
innovations are on the rise in contemporary Lithuanian art. Many international
competitive exhibitions, personal shows and group presentations have become the
most crowded art events, gathering the lovers of textile culture from all
over the world to the textile centres-cities Vilnius, Kaunas and Kėdainiai.
Contemporary artists conceptualise textile material as well as ancient or
innovative techniques, devoting their attention to basic human demands – search
for identity (personal identity as well as a national one). Themes relating to
body and tactility, childhood fairytales or comfortlessness of self-presentation
unlock the striving of the artists to speak about personal experience through
connotative nature of textiles. Lithuanian poems, which are known by heart,
woven into the carpets and steal plates exquisitely embroidered by our
grandmothers’ patterns, unfold archetypical approach to the national history,
experience, heritage and icons. Using diverse forms of conceptual textile, main
Lithuanian textile artists (Laima Oržekauskienė, Lina Jonikė, Eglė Ganda
Bogdanienė, Inga Likšaitė, Severija Inčirauskaitė-Kriaunevičienė, Monika
Žaltauskaitė-Grašienė, Feliksas Jakubauskas, Vita Gelūnienė, a group “Baltos
kandys”, etc.) propose experiments between the textile tradition (loom weaving,
hand embroidery, and felting) and the textile innovation (jacquard weaving,
machine embroidery, silkscreen-print, and industrial felt), creating objects not
for use or consumerism, but for the need to speak about the essential topics of
today’s reality using contemporary cultural approaches. That’s why working in
co-operation with textile industry companies for a contemporary artist is not
only a possibility, which is practiced in Lithuania, but rather a necessity
conditioned by time.
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